


Downbeat

by Gryphonrhi



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Challenges: Bagheera's Spring Challenge, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-02
Updated: 2010-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-07 16:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dark men, dark intents, and falling cherry blossoms. Written for Bagheera's <a href="http://ciceqi.slashcity.com/Spring.htm">Spring Challenge</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Downbeat

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers: 1013 thinks they own them. Alex probably disagrees. ::shrug:: My money's on the Rat. Written for the Spring Challenge and my own pleasure.   
> Rated: PG, at worst.

He sits, patient in the early evening, and waits. Dark hair, dark jacket, vivid green eyes dark with sights and memories no one should have to carry, and in the not bitter, not warm evening he simply... waits.

The benches are uncomfortable, as always, meant only for a brief stay rather than a long one. The shape doesn't quite fit bones: slats curve where they should be straight, lie rigid where they should yield to musculature. He slouches anyway, right arm thrown out along the back of the bench, and watches the last few people move along the mall. They avoid the homeless people, shying around them like the wind around an up-thrust rock, and he shakes his head: poverty's not contagious.

The wind picks up again, shifting the cool comfort of the night to a bracing bitterness and scattering cherry blossoms across his hair, his coat, the motionless black glove of his left hand. At last though, he sees what he's been waiting for, and he smiles.

Finally, the watcher is watched, and it took long enough, he thinks. But he sees Mulder across the mall, his stance and stride etched into his memory, unmistakable almost from the first meeting, and Alex's smile widens as he stands to leave. Let Mulder wonder what he was doing, who he was meeting, what secrets he was selling this time.

He'll never understand that it was the waiting that was the signal.  


_  
~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~_


End file.
